Word Origin & History

"full of instructive sayings," 1815, from French gnomique (18c.) and directly from Late Latin gnomicus "concerned with maxims, didactic," from Greek gnomikos, from gnome "thought, opinion, maxim, intelligence," from root of gignoskein "to come to know" (see gnostic). English gnome meant "short, pithy statement of general truth" (1570s). Gnomical is attested from 1610s.

Example Sentences for gnomic

They often say in their Gnomic aphorisms, ‘Even the Gods cannot alter the past.’

His method is gnomic, laconic, oracular; never persuasive or plausible.

He is a Gnomic Poet; and he is so, because he is emphatically the poet of man.

The Gnomic poets and the Seven Sages had crystallized morality in apothegms.

The Gnomic poets show how guilt, if unavenged at the moment, brings calamity upon the offspring of the evil-doer.

Viewed in this light, the gnomic poets mark a transition from Homer and Hesiod to the dramatists and moralists of Attica.

In some respects these gnomic poets present even a more gloomy view of human destinies than the epic poets.

The doubt of authorship which hangs over all the gnomic fragments warns us, therefore, to be cautious in ascribing them to Solon.

Thus Solon bore a prominent part in all the most important affairs of the period to which the gnomic poetry belongs.

As a gnomic writer Daniel approaches Chapman, but is far more musical and coherent.